The roadmap for anxiety care

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Alive and Kicking with Clare McKenna 27 min 2 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 1 month ago

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Who is Caroline Foran and what inspired her new book on anxiety?

Clare McKenna 0:01

Alive and kicking with Claire McKenna on News Talk. Caroline Foreign is an international best-selling Irish author, journalist, and podcaster, known for her honest practical writing on anxiety and mental health. Her previous books, including Owning It and Naked, have helped thousands navigate anxiety with clarity and confidence. In her most practical and personal book yet, Everything I Wish I'd Known About Anxiety, A Roadmap Back to You, Caroline offers a clear step-by-step Guide for moving forward through anxiety without skipping the foundations that make recovery stick. It's part prescriptive handbook, part conversation with her past self, and it's for anyone worn out by taking all the wrong turns.

Clare McKenna 0:48

And she joins me in studio now. Caroline, you're very welcome. Claire, it's so nice to be back in with you, especially. So So look, lots has happened since we last spoke. You're a mom, you've birthed another book which is a an incredible book. I mean all your books really are. They're really accessible. They have just a they have your personality thrown into them, which I think makes everybody, you know, everybody wants to be your friend. Um and they have you in a book.

Caroline Foran 1:14

Yeah.

Clare McKenna 1:15

But this one is really special. Everything I wish I'd known about anxiety. So why is this one different for those who haven't read it?

Caroline Foran 1:22

I suppose looking back, um, when I wrote my first book, which you know opened up all these doors for me, I was still very much in it. I was coming out of it. I was kind of still getting back on two feet. This is really ten years on. And it's looking back at all the things I wish I'd known. The the the mistakes that I made, and not in a way to be like harsh on yourself, but what I know would have made a difference. The the beliefs that I had, the assumptions and perceptions I had, or the things that I tried that just made things worse. And I realized especially with my friends and and peer groups and what I was seeing online, there were still so many things that people were getting wrong. Maybe that sounds a bit mean, but there was people weren't being um doing themselves any favors by thinking, for example,

Caroline Foran 1:58

that it's their responsibility to think their way out of anxiety when really that's totally missing. the point of how our nervous systems work and we were still it still happens all the time that people like attach blame and they think it's their fault if they're having these reactions to a world that it you know, of course we're having these reactions. Um and a lot of the time where people aren't aware of the role of the nervous system and how it's not um it's not a personality. It's it's a system that is reacting to life. Um and it's not necessarily something we can um, negate or hack our way out of. So I felt like it I really felt like even though there's so much awareness around anxiety now and people know, okay, I I can tell that I'm anxious.

Caroline Foran 2:34

I don't need to be told, Well, what even is anxiety? w we were still finding it hard, um, collectively to to move through it, to understand it, to relate to it and to overcome it. People were um, I suppose just saying, Oh, I'm an anxious person now, that's just me forever and what I really wanted with this book was to really let people know I am someone for whom anxiety was I was crippled by it. I was very physically and mentally unwell. I couldn't work. I was living my life from one panic attack to the next. And through everything that I did or should have done in that order in this book, had I had that awareness, I am now on the other side where it absolutely of course I have a stress response, you know, where I'm a human being, but that anxiety is no longer a feature.

Caroline Foran 3:12

It is not just like defining my Choices and decisions and that kind of thing. And I really do feel like I've overcome it.

Why does Caroline say her latest book is different from her earlier works?

Caroline Foran 3:19

Like I was a very anxious person, and I I don't even think my friends would describe me as that anymore.

Clare McKenna 3:23

Yeah. That's amazing, isn't it? And that was one of the most beautiful parts where you wrote reassurance from the other side. And you didn't obviously want to be glib and be like, You'll be okay, you've got this.